In the production of garments in commercial or industrial settings, the garments are typically formed or sewn from a series of workpieces. The workpieces themselves typically are formed in batches of workpieces at a series of separate work stations, and then are transferred to further work stations where they are combined to form finished garments. For example, a tubular shirt body may be cut and sewn at a first work station after which the shirt body is conveyed to a separate collar attachment station for attaching a collar, such as a circular crew neck collar attached about the neck opening of the shirt body, and then the sleeves are attached to thus form a T-shirt or similar garment. The production of such garments typically is accomplished in a high volume, high speed operation in which consistently sized and high quality finished garments are desired at the end of the fabrication process. If defects are found in the garments, the garments generally will be rejected and therefore must be sold either as seconds or discarded. It is possible to try to remove the stitching of the garments and re-sew the pieces together to form the garment with the defects eliminated. However, such a process is extremely time consuming and generally still results in a garment that is considered a second or defective garment.
Increasingly, there have been attempts to automate various processes or steps in the fabrication of garments to try to insure greater reliability and consistency of quality of the garments while increasing production rates. There are, however, still certain sewing operations that are highly dependent on the skill of the operator to accurately position the garments prior to sewing. Such sewing operations thus have remained primarily manual operations.
For example, in the production of shirts with circular or crew neck collars, i.e. T-shirts, the loading of circular collars on a sewing system for sewing to a shirt body still must be done manually. For such an operation, a circular collar first must be manually positioned by the operator about a pair of drive rollers, and physically moved about the drive rollers by the operator to align and position the edges of the collar in the proper position with respect to the sewing needle prior to the start of the sewing operation. After the collar has been properly positioned, the operator then places a shirt body over the collar with the edges of the neck opening of the shirt body matched with the cut edges of the collar and the sewing needle. In addition, if the collar has a seam, the operator must physically orient the seam of the collar in a position upstream of the sewing needle in a position so as to be able to align the shoulder seam of the shirt body therewith.
The loading of the collar on the sewing station thus is a very time consuming portion of the collar attachment process, as the operator must insure that the rough or to-be-sewn edges of the collar are properly aligned with each other and with the sewing needle, are loaded under the presser foot, with any seam of the collar being positioned in the proper desired position for alignment with the shoulder seam of the shirt body prior to loading the shirt body on the rollers. Thus, careful attention and manipulation of the collar with both hands is required by the operator. As a result, the operator's production is greatly hampered by her ability to accurately load the collars beneath the presser foot and sewing needle of the sewing head.
Accordingly, a need exists for a system and method for automatically loading a collar into a sewing position beneath a sewing head without requiring an operator to manually manipulate and align the edges of the collar in a position for sewing, and to enable efficient and reliable loading of the collars on the sewing station while enabling the operator to simultaneously perform additional tasks, so as to increase and enhance the productivity of the sewing station while ensuring high quality and minimal defects.